Company accidentally discovers the treatment after patients testing new anti-inflammatory drug report unexpected side effects.

Israeli biotech company Can-Fite BioPharma plans to enter the field of impotence treatment after the company discovered that its new anti-inflammatory drug could also have an impact on impotence.

In anti-inflammation trials, the company discovered that the active ingredient in its CF101 drug is suitable for treating impotence.

The company first noticed the unexpected side-effect in animal trials, but did not attribute significance to their finding. It was only in human trials, when patients declined to return the drugs when the trial had finished, that the company realized something unusual was going on.

“We saw that patients were not returning all the drugs at the end of the trial. When we clarified why this was, we found that some of the patients in the trial suffered from sexual dysfunction, and enjoyed a revival of their abilities when taking our drug, within six months of taking the treatment,” Can-Fite CEO Pnina Fishman told Israel’s financial daily, Globes.

CF101 stimulates Adenosine, which researchers around the world have found is related to relaxing the blood vessels. This is part of the erection process, said Fishman.
Can-Fite is now developing a new drug, CF602, which uses a different cocktail of the same active ingredients, but will be used to treat impotence. The drug has already been tested in pre-clinical trials and is looking safer even than CF101, according to Fishman.

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Editor and Israel Director, Nicky Blackburn has worked extensively as a journalist and editor both in Britain and Israel for a range of national and international publications including The Cambridge Evening News, London News, Travel Weekly, Israel High Tech Investor, and The Times of London. She was the Associate Editor at LINK Israel’s Business and Technology Magazine, and the High-Tech Correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.